Great Anticipation

Why anticipation is what you need to have

So here we are getting further towards Spring. The days are stretching out and life is looking lighter. Looking at discourse around spring there are always expectations of how great life will be in the sun.

Expectation is the mother of disappointment so how can we change expectations into something more useful?

We can do this by leveraging the much more useful ANTICIPATION.

Anticipation is an evolutionary benefit that can underpin great levels of wellbeing. This is from positive anticipation of future desired events being correlated strongly with enhanced wellbeing.

How people construct their future is a central organising conceptual feature of perception, cognition, affect, memory, motivation and action. Being able to anticipate is a huge evolutionary advantage that ensures not just survival but the ability to thrive in an every changing environment.

It is important though to differentiate between positive and negative anticipation. Negative anticipation leads to hyperactivity within the amygdala which relates to feelings of general anxiety and fear responses. Positive anticipation is linked with reward sensitivity, enhancement of memories with positive stimuli plus an easy and efficient way of generating positive emotional affect.

The really good news is that the more that the more we anticipate positive events then the faster our brain reacts to this and the higher our levels of wellbeing.

This is a huge reason why we have a need to positively view whatever tiny steps we have been making towards change. Progression towards any goals viewed with this positive anticipation lense strongly correlates both with feeling well and reaching our goals!

A quick and easy exercise you can commit to right now is to make an audit of how you are viewing your future. Is it through dread, exhaustion, anxiety or fear? I have to disclose now that when I look at the narrative, the discourse and the general state of public affairs it does not look pretty, nor does it look positive or optimistic.

BUT

Human beings are still human beings, and there is a huge need for connection, an evolutionary drive for sociality that is kind, altruistic and playful.

That is why I am still positive that there can be anticipation of better.

I have spoken and written about the mirror neuron system within the brain. This is so comforting in many ways, that even if everyone around us does not emulate the behaviours we wish to see, we can still influence by being what we want to see.

If someone else’s brain registers what you are doing, then it behaves as if it too is behaving in that way.

So we can totally be the best kind of influencer. Not the cynical, marketing of commercialism type.

You can influence what you want to be around, by being that behaviour.

We can only do this by having a healthy pre frontal cortex that is in charge of our emotional responses.

By practicing positive anticipation we are strengthening the ability to do that.

It is a win win.

So positively anticipation future events is a proven neuroscientific mechanism to creating a better (and kinder) world for yourself.